General Dr. Hans Emil Speidel

General during WW II and during the Cold War. Commander-In-Chief of the Allied Ground Forces in Central Europe. NATO Rank of Full General. Involved in the bomb coup attempt and plot to kill Adolph Hitler. Professor of Modern History at Tubingen University, Germany

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A version of this obituary appears in print on November 29, 1984, on Page B00020 of the National edition with the Headline: GEN. HANS SPEIDEL, WHO PLOTTED TO KILL HITLER https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/29/obituaries/gen-hans-speidel-who-...

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GEN. HANS SPEIDEL, WHO PLOTTED TO KILL HITLER By JOSEPH BERGER

Hans Speidel, a scholarly German general whose role in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler eased the path toward a key NATO command 13 years later, died yesterday at his home in West Germany. He was 87 years old and lived in Bad Honnef.

General Speidel, commander of NATO land forces in Central Europe from 1957 to 1963 and West Germany's first four-star general, was an amiable and worldly man who dedicated most of his life to the profession of arms.

He never joined the Nazi Party. But his intelligence and organizing abilities won him important Wehrmacht commands on both the Eastern and Western Fronts in World War II. In April 1944 he was chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the legendary former commander of the Africa Corps.

By that time his disillusion with the foolhardiness of some of Hitler's military strategies led him into conversations with a group of senior officers who were plotting a bold revolt against Hitler. Many of Plotters Executed

General Speidel was assigned by the plotters to persuade Rommel to join in, possibly to become head of the revolutionary government if the conspiracy succeeded. But the bomb placed under the conference table at Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia on July 20, 1944, failed to kill the dictator.

Many of the conspirators were executed. Rommel, who had been wounded three days before the assassination attempt, was forced to take poison.

General Speidel was arrested, but, according to historian John W. Wheeler-Bennett, he admitted nothing and betrayed nothing because that wily soldier was equal in guile and intelligence to Gestapo interrogators. Imprisoned in Berlin, he was released by United States troops at the end of the war.

For a few years afterward, General Speidel was a professor of modern history at Tubingen University, where he had received his doctoral degrees in economics and philosophy in 1925. Between classes, he also wrote Invasion 1944, a history of the invasion of Normandy as seen from the German side. One critic of the 1950 book wondered if General Speidel was not a little too impressed by the chivalry of many officers and a little too blind to their tolerance of Gestapo atrocities.

Helped Plan New Army When the allies decided to rearm West Germany, General Speidel was one of two Hitler-era generals invited to help plan the new army. Over five years, in an delicate process that was watched with resentment by some Europeans, he negotiated terms of West Germany's military force in the framework of a European army.

Other former officers saw him as a convincing spokesman who might help wipe out the stain left by the war crimes trials. Western military men hoped his association with the revolt against Hitler would still mistrust.

In 1957 he was named Commander of the Allied Forces, Central Europe, one of the most important posts in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Yet it took years before he won popular trust in much of Europe. On one of his inspection tours in Oslo, buses and street cars were stopped for two minutes in protest, and demonstrators at an airport held banners saying, We have forgiven the German people but not Hitler's generals. He served in the NATO post until 1963, when he was replaced by another German general.

He and his wife, Ruth, retired to Bad Honnef, across the Rhine from Bonn. They had two daughters and a son. Joined Army at 17.

Hans Speidel was born Oct. 28, 1897, in Metzingen, and entered the army shortly after he turned 17, two months after the outbreak of World War I.

In his four years as a junior officer in the Kaiser's forces, he impressed a small group of officers who intended to remake the German army into an elite corps. He was encouraged to study at Tubingen, and in 1930 he was appointed to the General Staff.

While the Nazis were rising to power, he was a military attache in Paris. In that post, he developed a strong affection for the French, and he played a key role in sabotaging Hitler's orders to demolish Paris when the Germans withdrew.

His contempt for Hitler's stewardship of the war was best summed up in his response to a questioner who wanted to know why Germany had been defeated on the Eastern Front. Too many Russians and one German too many, he said.

The general will be buried Monday with military honors in Bad Honnef.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel

Hans Speidel (28 October 1897 – 28 November 1984) was a German general during the Second World War and the Cold War, who served as Supreme Commander of the NATO ground forces in Central Europe from 1957 to 1963.

Speidel served as lieutenant-general and chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the Second World War. Speidel was a nationalist conservative who agreed with the territorial aspects of the Nazi regime's policies, but strongly disagreed with their racial policies. This led him to participate in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, after which he was jailed by the Gestapo. At the end of the war, he escaped from Nazi prison and went into hiding.

During the early Cold War, Speidel emerged as one of the leading German military figures, and played a key role in German rearmament and integration into NATO. He is thus regarded as one of the founders of the Bundeswehr. He was the first officer to be promoted to full General in West Germany and served as Supreme Commander of the NATO ground forces in Central Europe from 1957 to 1963, with headquarters at the Palace of Fontainebleau in Paris. Speidel was also a historian by training and wrote several books. He received the Grand Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1963.

He was the father of Brigadier General Hans Helmut Speidel and the father-in-law of European Commissioner and liberal politician Guido Brunner.

EARLY CAREER Speidel was born in Metzingen. He joined the German Army in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War and was quickly promoted to second lieutenant. During the war he was a company commander at the Battle of the Somme and an adjutant. He stayed in the German Army during the interwar period and also studied history and economics at different universities. In 1926 he received his Ph.D. degree in history magna cum laude.

WORLD WAR II Speidel took part in the invasion of France of 1940 and in August became Chief of Staff of the military commander in France. In 1942 Speidel was sent to the Eastern Front where he served as Chief of Staff of the 5th Army Corps, and as Chief of Staff of 8th Army in 1943, where he was promoted to general. In April 1944, Speidel was appointed Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B, stationed on the French Atlantic coast. When Rommel was wounded, Speidel continued as Chief of Staff for the new commander of Army Group B, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge.

Speidel with Erich von Manstein August 1943 On 26 August 1944, Speidel answered the phone when Alfred Jodl, the OKW chief of staff, called Field Marshal Walter Model, commander in chief of the western front, with Hitler's order to start bombing Paris immediately with V1 and V2 rockets. Model was not in. Speidel never did pass on the order to his superior.[1] He had studied in Paris and knew how valuable and culturally important the art in Paris was.

Speidel, a professional soldier and German nationalist, agreed with those aspects of Hitler's policy that returned Germany to its place as a world power, but disagreed with the Nazis' racial policies. He was involved in the 20 July Plot to kill Hitler and had been delegated by anti-Hitler forces to recruit Rommel for the conspiracy, which he had cautiously begun to do prior to Rommel's injury in a Canadian strafing attack on 17 July 1944. Speidel managed to become Rommel's confidant, purely by chance: Lucie Rommel, after having an argument with the wife of Alfred Gause (Rommel's then Chief-of-Staff) about who had the more honourable place at a wedding, decided to not only evict the Gause couple out of her house but to order her husband to dismiss Alfred Gause as well. Rommel chose Speidel, a fellow Swabian, as his new Chief-of-Staff.[2][3]

JULY 20 PLOT TO KILL HITLER Following the attempt the Gestapo rounded up, tortured and executed some five thousand Germans, including many high-ranking officers. Speidel's involvement was suspected by the Gestapo, and he was arrested on 7 September 1944. Rommel, in his final letter to Hitler of 1 October 1944, appealed for Speidel's release, but received no answer. Speidel appeared before an Army court of honour. According to an affidavit left by Heinz Guderian and Heinrich Kirchheim, interrogation, he blurted out Rommel's name. Maurice Remy comments that Speidel's testament did not truly betray Rommel, although Speidel probably blamed himself until his death for his revered Field Marshal's fate afterwards. Unknown to Speidel though, his statement offered nothing new or startling to the interrogators, who already obtained from other co-conspirators the information that Rommel not only knew but agreed with the assassination.[4] Gerd von Rundstedt, Heinz Guderian and Wilhelm Keitel refused to expel him from the German Army. Thus he was not compelled to appear before Roland Freisler's People's Court, which would have been a death sentence. He was jailed for seven months by the Gestapo. As Allied forces approached the location where he was held, he slipped from his captors and went into hiding. He was freed by French troops on 29 April 1945.

COLD WAR In 1950, Speidel was one of the authors of the Himmerod memorandum which addressed the issue of rearmament (Wiederbewaffnung) of the Federal Republic of Germany after World War II. As an important military adviser to the government of Konrad Adenauer, he was instrumental in the creation of the Bundeswehr, and later as a four-star general (the first to be awarded this rank by the Bundeswehr, together with Adolf Heusinger), he oversaw the smooth integration of the Bundeswehr into NATO.[5][6]

November 1955 (left to right): Adolf Heusinger, future Chief of Staff of Bundeswehr; Theodor Blank, Minister of Defence, West Germany; and Speidel

According to an article in Der Spiegel, which cited documents released by the Bundesnachrichtendienst in 2014, Speidel may have been part of the Schnez-Truppe, a secret illegal army that veterans of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS established up from 1949 in Germany.[7]

After the war Speidel served for some time as professor of modern history at Tübingen and in 1950 published his book Invasion 1944: Rommel and the Normandy Campaign before being involved in both the development and creation of the new German Army (Bundeswehr) which he joined, reaching the NATO rank of full general. He was subsequently appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied NATO ground forces in Central Europe in April 1957, a command that he held until retirement in September 1963. His headquarters were at the Palace of Fontainebleau in Paris.

In 1960, Speidel took legal action against an East German film studio which portrayed him as having been privy to the assassinations of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou in 1934, as well as having betrayed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to the Nazis after the 20 July Plot in 1944. He successfully claimed damages for libel; see Plato Films Ltd v Speidel [1961] AC 1090.[citation needed] Hans Speidel died in 1984 at Bad Honnef, North Rhine-Westphalia, aged 87.

Speidel's grave is at the Pragfriedhof in Stuttgart

Honours Honorary citizen of Metzingen, 1972 Grand Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1963 German Cross in Gold on 8 October 1942 as Oberst im Generstab in the general staff V. Armeekorps[8] Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 1 April 1944 as Generalleutnant and chief of the general staff of the 8. Armee[9] Goldene Württembergische Militärverdienstmedaille, 1917 Iron Cross, first class, 1914 (see photo)

Bibliography Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer (2000) [1986]. Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945 — Die Inhaber der höchsten Auszeichnung des Zweiten Weltkrieges aller Wehrmachtteile [The Bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945 — The Owners of the Highest Award of the Second World War of all Wehrmacht Branches] (in German). Friedberg, Germany: Podzun-Pallas. ISBN 978-3-7909-0284-6. Patzwall, Klaus D.; Scherzer, Veit (2001). Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941 – 1945 Geschichte und Inhaber Band II [The German Cross 1941 – 1945 History and Recipients Volume 2] (in German). Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall. ISBN 978-3-931533-45-8. Searle, Alaric (2003). Wehrmacht Generals, West German Society, and the Debate on Rearmament, 1949–1959. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 978-0-275-97968-3. Speidel, Hans (1950). Invasion 1944: Rommel and the Normandy Campaign. Chicago: Henry Regnery.

German Resistence Memorial Center: http://www.gdw-berlin.de/bio/ausgabe_mit-e.php?id=192

Newsreel of General Speidel Visiting Sandhurst-British Pathe: http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=61893

General Speidel attends NATO Banquet with the Duke of Edinburgh https://www.britishpathe.com/video/general-speidel-visits-sandhurst

http://www.biographicon.com/view/93sy1

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERspeidel.htm

Time Magazine aricle: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,723782,00.html

Obituary NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/29/obituaries/gen-hans-speidel-who-p...

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=27406873

http://ww2gravestone.com/people/speidel-dr-hans/

http://www.speidelfamilygenealogy.com/notablemembers.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Valkyrie

https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Hans_Speidel

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hans%20Speidel

German Resisence Memorial Center: http://www.gdw-berlin.de/bio/ausgabe_mit-e.php?id=192 Newsreel of General Speidel Visiting Sandhurst-British Pathe: http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=61893

General during WW II and during the Cold War. Commander-In-Chief of the Allied Ground Forces in Central Europe. NATO Rank of Full General. Involved in the bomb coup attempt and plot to kill Adolph Hitler. Professor of Modern History at Tubingen University.

German Resistence Memorial Center: http://www.gdw-berlin.de/bio/ausgabe_mit-e.php?id=192 Newsreel of General Speidel Visiting Sandhurst-British Pathe: http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=61893

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speidel_(surname)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel

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German World War II General, Professor, Author. Speidel was born in Metzingen in the state of Baden-Württemberg. His father, Dr. Emil Speidel was an upper level Forestry Council member and professor. Hans volunteered for World War I service in 1914 when he was 17 years old. In November, 1915 he was promoted to Lieutenant, fighting in Flanders, the Somme and Cambrai. Between the wars he remained in the German Army, studying history and economics in Berlin, Tuebingen and Stuttgart. In 1925 he was awarded a Ph.D and in 1932 was promoted to Captain. By the start of World War II, he was a staff officer in the 33rd Infantry Division. Quickly promoted, Speidel served in various staff positions. In 1944 he was promoted again, to Lieutenant General and was made Chief of Staff of Erwin Rommel's Army Group B, headquartered in La Roche-Guyon, where he was serving on June 6, 1944. He was involved in the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and was attempting and possibly had involved Rommel in the plot. He was arrested but not tried. He escaped and went into hiding until freed by French troops in 1945. After the war, he served as military adviser to Konrad Adenauer and published a book, "Invasion 1944: Rommel and the Normandy Campaign." When West Germany became part of NATO, Speidel achieved four-star rank and from 1957 to 1963, served as Commander in Chief, Allied Land Forces, Central Europe. Charles de Gaulle could never accept a former Wehrmacht officer in NATO and because of this, Speidel was finally replaced. He was awarded the German Cross and Knight's Cross.

Source: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/27406873/hans-speidel

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https://ww2gravestone.com/people/speidel-dr-hans/

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Source:
https://monoreel.ru/%D0%A8%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8...

Ханс Шпайдель (нем. Hans Speidel)

Biography
Entered the German army in 1914 , participated in the Battle of the Somme . By the beginning of the French campaign in 1940, he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and was appointed chief of staff of the occupying forces in France. In 1942 he was sent to the Eastern Front , in 1943 he was appointed chief of staff of Army Group South .

On April 15 , 1944, Speidel was called to France by General Erwin Rommel , with whom they served alongside, and was assigned to the post of Chief of Staff of Army Group B. After being wounded, Rommel continued to serve under General von Kluge .

Along with his friend Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel, Speidel was involved in the 1944 anti-Hitler conspiracy . However, despite strong suspicions, he was not convicted in this case. An officer's court of honor involving Gerd von Rundstedt , Heinz Guderian and Wilhelm Keitel refused to expel Speidel from the Wehrmacht , leaving him outside the jurisdiction of Roland Freisler's People's Court . Nevertheless, he was arrested by the Gestapo, spent 7 months in custody, was personally interrogated by the head of the RSHA Ernst Kaltenbrunner , but did not confess to anything and did not extradite anyone.April 29 , 1945 Speidel was liberated by the troops of the Western Allies .

After World War II, Speidel taught modern history at the University of Tübingen , wrote a book about the 1944 military campaign ( German: Invasion 1944. Ein Beitrag zu Rommels und des Reiches Schicksal ). Then he was involved in the formation of the Bundeswehr , on November 22 , 1955 he was appointed head of the armed forces of the German Ministry of Defense , in 1957 he received the rank of general . From 1957 to 1963 he served as Commander of the Allied Ground Forces of NATO in Central Europe, headquartered inFontainebleau .

In 1960, he sued a group of directors from the GDR, whose book "Operation Teutonic Sword" was published in the USSR in 1960. The authors accused Speidel of numerous crimes on the territory of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, preparing an assassination attempt on French Foreign Minister Barthou and King Alexander in 1934, and also in the death of Erwin Rommel .

Literature
Barnett C. Hitler's Generals . - New York, NY: Grove Press, 1989. - 528 p. — ISBN 0-802-13994-9 .
A. and A. Thorndike , K. Raddatz - Operation "Teutonic Sword" M., 1960
Notes
↑ 1 2 3 4 German National Library , Berlin State Library , Bavarian State Library , etc. Record #118616013 // General Regulatory Control (GND) - 2012-2016.
↑ 1 2 data.bnf.fr : Open Data Platform 2011.
↑ 12 SNAC _
Links
Wikimedia Commons logoWikimedia Commons has media related to Hans Speidel

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https://www.gettyimages.dk/photos/hans-speidel

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Source:

https://centralbylines.co.uk/hitler-general-speidel-and-rudolf-hess...

Hitler, General Speidel and Rudolf Hess: plots and speculations

Professor David Childs details General Speidel’s plot against Hitler and speculates whether Rudolf Hess died from suicide or murder

General Speidel: did he save Paris?
Who would want to destroy the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, Arc de triomphe, Notre Dame and all the other magnificent monuments of Paris? As the allied forces fought their way towards the French capital in 1945, Hitler gave the order for its total destruction. Many of the soldiers? were wired up for destruction.

On August 26 1944, General Hans Speidel (1897–1984) answered the phone at the German HQ in Paris, when Alfred Jodl the chief of staff, called Field Marshal Walter Model, commander of the Western front, with Hitler’s orders to fire V1 and V2 rockets at Paris immediately. Model was not there… and Speidel did not pass the order on to his superiors. He had studied in pre-war Paris and served in the German Embassy, and had developed a strong affection for the French and their culture.

A junior officer in WWI, Speidel took part in the 1940 invasion of France in WWII. In 1942 he was sent to the Eastern Front where he served as chief of staff of the 5th Army Corps, and later of 8th Army. In 1943 he was promoted to general.

At that time, Speidel was already involved in a plan to assassinate Hitler. In April 1944 he became chief of staff for the commander in chief of the army group in the west, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Speidel established contact to the military commander in France, General Carl Heinrich von Stülpnagel, who tried to convince Rommel to join an action against Hitler. Shortly before the assassination attempt of July 20 1944, Rommel was seriously wounded and was replaced by General Field Marshal von Kluge, who was unwilling to make a firm commitment to participate in the coup attempt.

Although Speidel had not been informed about the planned assassination, on July 20 1944 he tried to persuade Kluge to launch the prearranged measures. Hans Speidel was arrested on September 7 1944 and initially imprisoned and interrogated in Berlin. At the end of 1944, he was released for a short period but then imprisoned again in different places. A few days before the end of the war he managed to escape his pursuers and get to safety in south-west Germany. With the war’s end in 1945, Speidel took up academic work at the University of Tübingen until it was time to put on a new uniform, that of the Bundeswehr, the West German armed forces, after NATO agreed on the rearmament of West Germany.

My wife and I met General Speidel, at his home in the spar town of Bad Honnef at the end of his life. Remarkably, he served as commander of NATO land forces in Central Europe from 1957 to 1963 and was West Germany’s first four-star general. His office was in ‎Fontainebleau outside Paris.

After mixing with Adenauer, Eisenhower, Montgomery, Helmut Schmidt, and so many others, he was bored, with life at home in a wheelchair, and was glad to see us and his wife Ruth, welcomed us. He looked very frail and when his daughter arrived, we were soon on our way! She was worried our visit would be too much for him but not before he expressed his pleasure at the thought of the peoples of Europe uniting.

Ханс Шпайдель (нем. Hans Speidel; 28 октября 1897, Метцинген — 28 ноября 1984, Бад-Хоннеф) — немецкий военачальник, генерал-лейтенант (с 1 января 1944 года).

Поступил в германскую армию в 1914 году, участвовал в битве на Сомме. К началу Французской кампании 1940 года дослужился до звания подполковника и был назначен начальником штаба оккупационных войск во Франции. В 1942 году был направлен на Восточный фронт, в 1943 году был назначен начальником штаба группы армий «Юг».

15 апреля 1944 года Шпайдель был вызван во Францию генералом Эрвином Роммелем, с которым они служили вместе, и получил назначение на пост начальника штаба группы армий «B». После ранения Роммеля продолжал служить под началом генерала фон Клюге.

Вместе со своим другом Карлом Генрихом фон Штюльпнагелем Шпайдель был связан с антигитлеровским заговором 1944 года. Тем не менее, несмотря на серьёзные подозрения, он не был осуждён по этому делу. Офицерский суд чести с участием Герда фон Рундштедта, Хайнца Гудериана и Вильгельма Кейтеля отказался исключить Шпайделя из вермахта, в результате чего он не попал под юрисдикцию Народного суда Роланда Фрайслера. Тем не менее, он был арестован гестапо, провёл в заключении 7 месяцев, допрашивался лично главой РСХА Эрнстом Кальтенбруннером, но ни в чём не сознался и никого не выдал. 29 апреля 1945 года Шпайдель был освобождён войсками западных союзников.

После Второй мировой войны Шпайдель преподавал новейшую историю в Тюбингенском университете, написал книгу о военной кампании 1944 года (нем. Invasion 1944. Ein Beitrag zu Rommels und des Reiches Schicksal). Затем он был привлечён к формированию бундесвера, 22 ноября 1955 года был назначен начальником управления вооружённых сил министерства обороны ФРГ, в 1957 году получил генеральский чин. C 1 апреля 1957 по сентябрь 1963 года занимал должность командующего объединёнными сухопутными войсками НАТО в Центральной Европе со штаб-квартирой в Фонтенбло. Его назначение вызвало протесты ряда общественных деятелей, в том числе генерального секретаря Всемирной федерации профсоюзов Луи Сайяна[3]. Также непримиримым противником Шпайделя был президент Франции Ш. де Голль, всячески добивавшийся ухода генерала (получившего это звание 14 июня 1957 года) с поста командующего[4]. В марте 1964 года ушёл в отставку и в октябре того же года избран президентом Немецкого института международных отношений и безопасности (Мюнхен).

В 1960 году подал в суд на группу режиссёров из ГДР, чья книга «Операция „Тевтонский меч“» вышла в СССР в 1960 году. Авторы обвиняли Шпайделя в многочисленных преступлениях на территории СССР во время Великой Отечественной войны, подготовке покушения на министра иностранных дел Франции Барту и короля Александра в 1934 году, а также в смерти Эрвина Роммеля.